that suggested that he had not come there to look at the pictures.
Indeed, he did not want to look at the pictures, though he liked
pictures well enough. Not that there was anything immoral or improper
about those highly modern pictorial designs. He would indeed be of an
inflammable temperament who was stirred to any of the more pagan
passions by the display of interrupted spirals, inverted cones and
broken cylinders with which the art of the future inspired or menaced
mankind. The truth is that Father Brown was looking for a young friend
who had appointed that somewhat incongruous meeting-place, being herself
of a more futuristic turn. The young friend was also a young relative;
one of the few relatives that he had. Her name was Elizabeth Fane,
simplified into Betty, and she was the child of a sister who had married
into a race of refined but impoverished squires. As the squire was dead
as well as impoverished. Father Brown stood in the relation of a
protector as well as a priest, and in some sense a guardian as well is
an uncle. At the moment, however, he was blinking about at the groups in
the gallery without catching sight of the familiar brown hair and bright
face of his niece. Nevertheless, he saw some people he knew and a number
of people he did not know, including some that, as a mere matter of
taste, he did not much want to know.
Among the people the priest did not know and who yet aroused his
interest was a lithe and alert young man, very beautifully dressed and
looking rather like a foreigner, because, while his beard was cut in a
spade shape like an old Spaniard's, his dark hair was cropped so close
as to look like a tight black skull-cap. Among the people the priest did
not particularly want to know was a very dominant-looking lady,
sensationally clad in scarlet, with a mane of yellow hair too long to be
called bobbed, but too loose to be called anything else. She had a
powerful and rather heavy face of a pale and rather unwholesome
complexion, and when she looked at anybody she cultivated the
fascinations of a basilisk. She towed in attendance behind her a short
man with a big beard and a very broad face, with long sleepy slits of
eyes. The expression of his face was beaming and benevolent, if only
partially awake; but his bull neck, when seen from behind, looked a
little brutal.
Father Brown gazed at the lady, feeling that the appearance and approach
of his niece would be an agreeable contrast. Yet he continued to gaze,
for some reason, until he reached the point of feeling that the
appearance of anybody would be an agreeable contrast. It was therefore
with a certain relief, though with a slight start as of awakening, that
he turned at the sound of his name and saw another face that he knew.
It was the sharp but not unfriendly face of a lawyer named Granby, whose
patches of grey hair might almost have been the powder from a wig, so
incongruous were they with his youthful energy of movement. He was one
of those men in the City who run about like schoolboys in and out of
their offices. He could not run round the fashionable picture gallery
quite in that fashion; but he looked as if he wanted to, and fretted as
he glanced to left and right, seeking somebody he knew.
"I didn't know," said Father Brown, smiling, "that you were a patron of
the New Art."
"I didn't know that you were," retorted the other. "I came here to catch
a man."
"I hope you will have good sport," answered the priest. "I'm doing much
the same."
"Said he was passing through to the Continent," snorted the solicitor,
"and could I meet him in this cranky place." He ruminated a moment, and
said abruptly: "Look here, I know you can keep a secret. Do you know Sir
John Musgrave?"
"No," answered the priest; "but I should hardly have thought he was a
secret, though they say he does hide himself in a castle. Isn't he the
old man they tell all those tales about--how he lives in a tower with a
real portcullis and drawbridge, and generally refuses to emerge from the
Dark Ages? Is he one of your clients?"
"No," replied Granby shortly: "it's his son, Captain Musgrave, who has
come to us. But the old man counts for a good deal in the affair, and I
don't know him; that's the point. Look here, this is confidential, as I
say, but I can confide in you." He dropped his voice and drew his friend
apart into a side gallery containing representations of various real
objects, which was comparatively empty.
"This young Musgrave," he said, "wants to raise a big sum from us on a
_post obit_ on his old father in Northumberland. The old man's long past
seventy and presumably will _obit_ some time or other; but what about the
_post_, so to speak? What will happen afterwards to his cash and castles
and portcullises and all the rest? It's a very fine old estate, and
still worth a lot, but strangely enough it isn't entailed. So you see
how we stand. The question is, as the man said in Dickens, is the old
man friendly?"
"If he's friendly to his son you'll feel all the friendlier," observed
Father Brown. "No, I'm afraid I can't help you. I never met Sir John
Musgrave, and I understand very few people do meet him nowadays. But it
seems obvious you have a right to an answer on that point before you
lend the young gentleman your firm's money. Is he the sort that people
cut off with a shilling?"
"Well, I'm doubtful," answered the other. "He's very popular and
brilliant and a great figure in society; but he's a great deal abroad,
and he's been a journalist."
"Well," said Father Brown, "that's not a crime. At least not always."
"Nonsense!" said Granby curtly. "You know what I mean--he's rather a
rolling stone, who's been a journalist and a lecturer and an actor, and
all sorts of things. I've got to know where I stand.... Why, there he
is."
And the solicitor, who had been stamping impatiently about the emptier
gallery, turned suddenly and darted into the more crowded room at a run.
He was running towards the tall and well-dressed young man with the
short hair and the foreign-looking beard.
The two walked away together talking, and for some moments afterwards
Father Brown followed them with his screwed, short-sighted eyes. His
gaze was shifted and recalled, however, by the breathless and even
boisterous arrival of his niece, Betty. Rather to the surprise of her
uncle, she led him back into the emptier room and planted him on a seat
that was like an island in that sea of floor.
"I've got something I must tell you," she said. "It's so silly that
nobody else will understand it."
"You overwhelm me," said Father Brown. "Is it about this business your
mother started telling me about? Engagements and all that; not what the
military historians call a general engagement."
"You know," she said, "that she wants me to be engaged to Captain
Musgrave."
"I didn't," said Father Brown with resignation; "but Captain Musgrave
seems to be quite a fashionable topic."
"Of course we're very poor," she said, "and it's no good saying it makes
no difference."
"Do you want to marry him?" asked Father Brown, looking at her through
his half-closed eyes.
She frowned at the floor, and answered in a lower tone:
"I thought I did. At least I think I thought I did. But I've just had
rather a shock."
"Then tell us all about it."
"I heard him laugh," she said.
"It is an excellent social accomplishment," he replied.
"You don't understand," said the girl. "It wasn't social at all. That
was just the point of it--that it wasn't social."
She paused a moment, and then went on firmly:
"I came here quite early, and saw him sitting quite alone in the middle
of that gallery with the new pictures, that was quite empty then. He had
no idea I or anybody was near; he was sitting quite alone, and he
laughed."
"Well, no wonder," said Father Brown. "I'm not an art critic myself, but
as a general view of the pictures taken as a whole----"
"Oh, you _won't_ understand," she said almost angrily. "It wasn't a bit
like that. He wasn't looking at the pictures. He was staring right up at
the ceiling; but his eyes seemed to be turned inwards, and he laughed so
that my blood ran cold."
The priest had risen and was pacing the room with his hands behind him.
"You mustn't be hasty in a case of this sort," he began. "There are two
kinds of men--but we can hardly discuss him just now, for here he is."
Captain Musgrave entered the room swiftly and swept it with a smile.
Granby, the lawyer, was just behind him, and his legal face bore a new
expression of relief and satisfaction.
"I must apologize for everything I said about the Captain," he said to
the priest as they drifted together towards the door. "He's a thoroughly
sensible fellow and quite sees my point. He asked me himself why I
didn't go north and see his old father; I could hear from the old man's
own lips how it stood about the inheritance. Well, he couldn't say
fairer than that, could he? But he's so anxious to get the thing settled
that he offered to take me up in his own car to Musgrave Moss. That's
the name of the estate. I suggested that, if he was so kind, we might go
together; and we're starting to-morrow morning."
As they spoke Betty and the Captain came through the doorway together,
making in that framework at least a sort of picture that some would be
sentimental enough to prefer to cones and cylinders. Whatever their
other affinities, they were both very good-looking; and the lawyer was
moved to a remark on the fact, when the picture abruptly altered.
Captain James Musgrave looked out into the main gallery, and his
laughing and triumphant eyes were riveted on something that seemed to
change him from head to foot. Father Brown looked round as under an
advancing shadow of premonition; and he saw the lowering, almost livid
face of the large woman in scarlet under its leonine yellow hair. She
always stood with a slight stoop, like a bull lowering its horns, and
the expression of her pale pasty face was so oppressive and hypnotic
that they hardly saw the little man with the large beard standing beside
her.
Musgrave advanced into the centre of the room towards her, almost like a
beautifully dressed waxwork wound up to walk. He said a few words to
her that could not be heard. She did not answer; but they turned away
together, walking down the long gallery as if in debate, the short,
bull-necked man with the beard bringing up the rear like some grotesque
goblin page.
"Heaven help us!" muttered Father Brown, frowning after them. "Who in
the world is that woman?"
"No pal of mine, I'm happy to say," replied Granby with grim flippancy.
"Looks as if a little flirtation with her might end fatally, doesn't
it?"
"I don't think he's flirting with her," said Father Brown.
Even as he spoke the group in question turned at the end of the gallery
and broke up, and Captain Musgrave came back to them in hasty strides.
"Look here," he cried, speaking naturally enough, though they fancied
his colour was changed. "I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Granby, but I find I
can't come north with you to-morrow. Of course, you will take the car
all the same. Please do; I shan't want it. I--I have to be in London
for some days. Take a friend with you if you like."
"My friend, Father Brown----" began the lawyer.
"If Captain Musgrave is really so kind," said Father Brown gravely. "I
may explain that I have some status in Mr. Granby's inquiry, and it
would be a great relief to my mind if I could go."
Which was how it came about that a very elegant car, with an equally
elegant chauffeur, shot north the next day over the Yorkshire moors,
bearing the incongruous burden of a priest who looked rather like a
black bundle, and a lawyer who had the habit of running about on his
feet instead of racing on somebody else's wheels.
They broke their journey very agreeably in one of the great dales of the
West Riding, dining and sleeping at a comfortable inn, and starting
early next day, began to run along the Northumbrian coast till they
reached a country that was a maze of sand dunes and rank sea meadows,
somewhere in the heart of which lay the old Border castle which had
remained so unique and yet so secretive a monument of the old Border
wars. They found it at last, by following a path running beside a long
arm of the sea that ran inland, and turned eventually into a sort of
rude canal ending in the moat of the castle. The castle really was a
castle, of the square, embattled plan that the Normans built everywhere
from Galilee to the Grampians. It did really and truly have a portcullis
and a drawbridge, and they were very realistically reminded of the fact
by an accident that delayed their entrance.
They waded amid long coarse grass and thistle to the bank of the moat
which ran in a ribbon of black with dead leaves and scum upon it, like
ebony inlaid with a pattern of gold. Barely a yard or two beyond the
black ribbon was the other green bank and the big stone pillars of the
gateway. But so little, it would seem, had this lonely fastness been
approached from outside that when the impatient Granby halloed across to
the dim figures behind the portcullis, they seemed, to have considerable
difficulty even in lowering the great rusty drawbridge. It started on
its way, turning over like a great falling tower above them, and then
stuck, sticking out in mid-air at a threatening angle.
The impatient Granby, dancing upon the bank, called out to his
companion:
"Oh, I can't stand these stick-in-the-mud ways! Why, it'd be less
trouble to jump."
And with characteristic impetuosity he did jump, landing with a slight
stagger in safety on the inner shore. Father Brown's short legs were not
adapted to jumping. But his temper was more adapted than most people's
to falling with a splash into very muddy water. By the promptitude of
his companion he escaped falling in very far. But as he was being hauled
up the green, slimy bank, he stopped with bent head, peering at a
particular point upon the grassy slope.
"Are you botanizing?" asked Granby irritably. "We've got no time for you
to collect rare plants after your last attempt as a diver among the
wonders of the deep. Come on, muddy or no, we've got to present
ourselves before the baronet."
When they had penetrated into the castle, they were received courteously
enough by an old servant, the only one in sight, and after indicating
their business were shown into a long oak-panelled room with latticed
windows of antiquated pattern. Weapons of many different centuries hung
in balanced patterns on the dark walls, and a complete suit of
fourteenth-century armour stood like a sentinel beside the large
fireplace. In another long room beyond could be seen, through the
half-open door, the dark colours of the rows of family portraits.
"I feel as if I'd got into a novel instead of a house," said the lawyer.
"I'd no idea anybody did really keep up the 'Mysteries of Udolpho' in
this fashion."
"Yes; the old gentleman certainly carries out his historical craze
consistently," answered the priest; "and these things are not fakes,
either. It's not done by somebody who thinks all mediæval people lived
at the same time. Sometimes they make up suits of armour out of
different bits; but that suit all covered one man, and covered him very
completely. You, see it's the late sort of tilting-armour."
"I think he's a late sort of host, if it comes to chat," grumbled
Granby. "He's keeping us waiting the devil of a time."
"You must expect everything to go slowly in a place like this," said
Father Brown. "I think it's very decent of him to see us at all: two
total strangers come to ask him highly personal questions."
And, indeed, when the master of the house appeared they had no reason to
complain of their reception; but rather became conscious of something
genuine in the traditions of breeding and behaviour that could retain
their native dignity without difficulty in that barbarous solitude, and
after those long years of rustication and moping. The baronet did not
seem either surprised or embarrassed at the rare visitation; though they
suspected that he had not had a stranger in his house for a quarter of a
lifetime, he behaved as if he had been bowing out duchesses a moment
before. He showed neither shyness nor impatience when they touched on
the very private matter of their errand; after a little leisurely
reflection he seemed to recognize their curiosity as justified under the
circumstances. He was a thin, keen-looking old gentleman, with black
eyebrows and a long chin, and though the carefully-curled hair he wore
was undoubtedly a wig, he had the wisdom to wear the grey wig of an
elderly man.
"As regards the question that immediately concerns you," he said, "the
answer is very simple indeed. I do most certainly propose to hand on the
whole of my property to my son, as my father handed it on to me; and
nothing--I say advisedly, nothing--would induce me to take any other
course."
"I am most profoundly grateful for the information," answered the
lawyer. "But your kindness encourages me to say that you are putting it
very strongly. I would not suggest that it is in the least likely that
your son would do anything to make you doubt his fitness for the charge.
Still, he might----"
"Exactly," said Sir John Musgrave dryly, "he might. It is rather an
under-statement to say that he might. Will you be good enough to step
into the next room with me for a moment."
He led them into the further gallery, of which they had already caught a
glimpse, and gravely paused before a row of the blackened and lowering
portraits.
"This is Sir Roger Musgrave," he said, pointing to a long-faced person
in a black periwig. "He was one of the lowest liars and rascals in the
rascally time of William of Orange, a traitor to two kings and something
like the murderer of two wives. That is his father, Sir Robert, a
perfectly honest old cavalier. That is his son, Sir James, one of the
noblest of the Jacobite martyrs and one of the first men to attempt some
reparation to the Church and the poor. Does it matter that the House of
Musgrave, the power, the honour, the authority, descended from one good
man to another good man through the interval of a bad one? Edward I
governed England well. Edward III covered England with glory. And yet
the second glory came from the first glory through the infamy and
imbecility of Edward II, who fawned upon Gaveston and ran away from
Bruce. Believe me, Mr. Granby, the greatness of a great house and
history is something more than these accidental individuals who carry it
on, even though they do not grace it. From father to son our heritage
has come down, and from father to son it shall continue. You may assure
yourselves, gentlemen, and you may assure my son, that I shall not leave
my money to a home for lost cats. Musgrave shall leave it to Musgrave
till the heavens fall."
"Yes," said Father Brown thoughtfully; "I see what you mean."
"And we shall be only too glad," said the solicitor, "to convey such a
happy assurance to your son."
"You may convey the assurance," said their host gravely, "He is secure
in any event of having the castle, the title, the land and the money.
There is only a small and merely private addition to that arrangement.
Under no circumstances whatever will I ever speak to him as long as I
live."
The lawyer remained in the same respectful attitude, but he was now
respectfully staring.
"Why, what on earth has he----"
"I am a private gentleman," said Musgrave, "as well as the custodian of
a great inheritance. And my son did something so horrible that he has
ceased to be--I will not say a gentleman--but even a human being. It
is the worst crime in the world. Do you remember what Douglas said when
Marmion, his guest, offered to shake hands with him?"
"Yes," said Father Brown.
"'My castles are my king's alone, from turret to foundation stone,'"
said Musgrave. "'The hand of Douglas is his own.'"
He turned towards the other room and showed his rather dazed visitors
back into it.
"I hope you will take some refreshment," he said, in the same equable
fashion. "If you have any doubt about your movements, I should be
delighted to offer you the hospitality of the castle for the night."
"Thank you, Sir John," said the priest in a dull voice, "but I think we
had better go."
"I will have the bridge lowered at once," said their host; and in a few
moments the creaking of that huge and absurdly antiquated apparatus
filled the castle like the grinding of a mill. Rusty as it was, however,
it worked successfully this time, and they found themselves standing
once more on the grassy bank beyond the moat.
Granby was suddenly shaken by a shudder.
"What in hell was it that his son did?" he cried.
Father Brown made no answer. But when they had driven off again in their
car and pursued their journey to a village not far off, called
Graystones, where they alighted at the inn of the Seven Stars, the
lawyer learned with a little mild surprise that the priest did not
propose to travel much farther; in other words, that he had apparently
every intention of remaining in the neighbourhood.
"I cannot bring myself to leave it like this," he said gravely. "I will
send back the car, and you, of course, may very naturally want to go
with it. Your question is answered; it is simply whether your firm can
afford to lend money on young Musgrave's prospects. But my question
isn't answered; it is whether he is a fit husband for Betty. I must try
to discover whether he's really done something dreadful, or whether it's
the delusion of an old lunatic."
"But," objected the lawyer, "if you want to find out about him, why
don't you go after him? Why should you hang about in this desolate hole
where he hardly ever comes?"
"What would be the use of my going after him?" asked the other. "There's
no sense in going up to a fashionable young man in Bond Street and
saying: 'Excuse me, but have you committed a crime too horrible for a
human being?' If he's bad enough to do it, he's certainly bad enough to
deny it. And we don't even know what it is. No, there's only one man
that knows, and _may_ tell, in some further outburst of dignified
eccentricity. I'm going to keep near him for the present."
And in truth Father Brown did keep near the eccentric baronet, and did
actually meet him on more than one occasion, with the utmost politeness
on both sides. For the baronet, in spite of his years, was very vigorous
and a great walker, and could often be seen stumping through the
village, and along the country lanes. Only the day after their arrival,
Father Brown, coming out of the inn on to the cobbled market-place, saw
the dark and distinguished figure stride past in the direction of the
post office. He was very quietly dressed in black, but his strong face
was even more arresting in the strong sunlight; with his silvery hair,
swarthy eyebrows and long chin, he had something of a reminiscence of
Henry Irving, or some other famous actor. In spite of his hoary hair,
his figure as well as his face suggested strength, and he carried his
stick more like a cudgel than a crutch. He saluted the priest, and spoke
with the same air of coming fearlessly to the point which had marked his
revelations of yesterday.
"If you are still interested in my son," he said, using the term with an
icy indifference, "you will not see very much of him. He has just left
the country. Between ourselves, I might say fled the country."
"Indeed," said Father Brown with a grave stare.
"Some people I never heard of, called Grunov, have been pestering me, of
all people, about his whereabouts," said Sir John; "and I've just come
in to send off a wire to tell them that, so far as I know, he's living
in the Poste Restante, Riga. Even that has been a nuisance. I came in
yesterday to do it, but was five minutes too late for the post office.
Are you staying long? I hope you will pay me another visit."
When the priest recounted to the lawyer his little interview with old
Musgrave in the village, the lawyer was both puzzled and interested.
"Why has the Captain bolted?" he asked. "Who are the other people who
want him? Who on earth are the Grunovs?"
"For the first, I don't know," replied Father Brown. "Possibly his
mysterious sin has come to light. I should rather guess that the other
people are blackmailing him about it. For the third, I think I do know.
That horrible fat woman with yellow hair is called Madame Grunov, and
that little man passes as her husband."
The next day Father Brown came in rather wearily, and threw down his
black bundle of an umbrella with the air of a pilgrim laying down his
staff. He had an air of some depression. But it was as it was so often
in his criminal investigations. It was not the depression of failure,
but the depression of success.